At this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Alcatel-Lucent is showcasing NFV-based virtualized radio access network technology in collaboration with Intel, China Mobile, and Telefónica.
Alcatel-Lucent said its vRAN solutions will be available for customer trials during 2015 and for commercial operation in 2016. Over the past year, the company has announced the virtualization of a wide range of network functions, including evolved packet core, IMS, Content Delivery Network and service routing technologies. Its CloudBand NFV platform has been featured in over 30 customer projects and has an NFV ecosystem of over 60 members.
Alcatel-Lucent’s vRAN comprises a virtualized baseband unit (vBBU) that uses general purpose servers with Intel Xeon processors.
Alcatel-Lucent and China Mobile, which have a long-standing co-development agreement in place, are showing progress in the Cloud-RAN program.
Telefónica is also showing the Alcatel-Lucent vRAN solution on its booth as part as an ambitious example of an end-to-end fully virtualized network running at #MWC15.
“A virtualized RAN will allow operators to take a big step toward 5G and benefit from the advanced features and efficiencies enabled by LTE-A. By teaming on this technology, Alcatel-Lucent, Intel and China Mobile have been able to very quickly develop a comprehensive solution that will allow operators to evolve their networks more efficiently and effectively,” stated Glenn Booth Senior Vice President and General Manger of Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE Business Unit.
